Unrest is caused by friction between you and a province's population. In physics terms, it's inefficiency.

What causes torches and pitchforks? Quite a bit; conquest, random events, blood hunting, heinous rituals, and especially unsavory units.

Unrest affects Income, Resources, Recruitment Points, and Blood Hunting success.

A point of Unrest reduces Recruitment Points by 1%. It also reduces "womanpower", reducing the success rate for Blood Hunting by 0.25%.

This also affects Commander Points, just the same as it affects Recruitment Points. The effect is rounded down, however.

Monthly Income and Resources in provinces are each divided by 1. Unrest adds to these denominators; a point of Unrest adds 0.02 to the Income denominator, and 0.01 to the Resources denominator.

Unrest	% Available	% Available	% Available	% Available
0	100%	100%	100%	100%
25	75%	93.75%	66.67%	80%
50	50%	87.5%	50%	66.67%
75	25%	81.25%	40%	57.14%
100	0%	75%	33.33%	50%
200	0%	50%	20%	33.33%
300	0%	25%	14.29%	25%
400	0%	0%	11.11%	20%
500	0%	0%	9.09%	16.67%

Unrest also makes Patrolling in the province tougher. Every point of Unrest decreases local Patrol Strength by 0.5, though this penalty is capped at 50 from 100 Unrest.

The maximum amount of Unrest a province can have is determined by its Population. A province with zero taxpayers in it cannot have Unrest. Every 10 taxpayers (with 10 being the minimum unit of Population) increases the Unrest cap by 1, up to a maximum of 500 Unrest with 5000 taxpayers.

Unrest Reduction happens in three stages.

• Every month/turn, Unrest passively decreases by a minimum of 1 point. Every point of friendly Dominion in the province also removes 0.5 points of Unrest, rounded up after it's all added together. Every 10 points of local Province Defense removes 1 point of Unrest as well; the effect of Province Defense is rounded down, so 59 Points is just as effective as 50.
• After that, Unrest is passively decimated, reduced by 1/10th rounded down. The denominator of 10 is decreased by Order on the Scales (increasing the shave up to 1/5th with 5 points), and increased by Turmoil (decreasing the shave down to 1/15th with 5 points).
• After all that, Patrolling squads (but not Patrolling Province Defenses) actively reduce Unrest. In Dominions 5, Patrolling had a base 50% chance to succeed at Unrest-reducing, modified by 2% in either direction by Patrol Strength, removing 1d(Patrol Strength) Unrest if successful; the manual for Dominions 6 doesn't say anything about the formula, but it mentions a change in other Patrol effects, so this formula might not apply. According to the manual, Patrollers kill 10 taxpayers for every "filthy brigand" (every point of Unrest) they cull.